@shajantrik.bsky.social
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I've been dying to tell people I wrote the essay for TROUBLE IN PARADISE, a true Lubitsch masterpiece, and now I can. It's hilarious, it's gorgeous, there's nothing like it, and spending time with Trouble last year soothed my soul. www.criterion.com/films/723-tr....
January 16, 2026 at 6:28 PM
I've been dying to tell people I wrote the essay for TROUBLE IN PARADISE, a true Lubitsch masterpiece, and now I can. It's hilarious, it's gorgeous, there's nothing like it, and spending time with Trouble last year soothed my soul. www.criterion.com/films/723-tr....
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has anyone ever been more wrong
January 16, 2026 at 1:39 AM
has anyone ever been more wrong
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Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.
January 12, 2026 at 7:46 PM
Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.
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"What is there to explain, anyway? That life is infinitely inventive? That some of us are a little different? That some of us keep living while others do not?" www.awritersnotebook.org/p/words-and-...
Words and Their Meaning
On titles, relationships, misunderstandings, slurs.
www.awritersnotebook.org
January 11, 2026 at 10:14 AM
"What is there to explain, anyway? That life is infinitely inventive? That some of us are a little different? That some of us keep living while others do not?" www.awritersnotebook.org/p/words-and-...
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and then for hours used passive voice to pretend they had no idea who was behind the apparently spontaneous explosions
(Semafor) - The New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night — but held off publishing what they knew to avoid endangering US troops ..
@semafor.com
www.semafor.com/article/01/0...
@semafor.com
www.semafor.com/article/01/0...
January 4, 2026 at 2:22 AM
and then for hours used passive voice to pretend they had no idea who was behind the apparently spontaneous explosions
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With a knock on your door, a kindly wizard invites you to join us on Shelved By Genre's LORD OF THE YEAR, in which we will consider the popular but contested works of JRR Tolkien, kicking things off with a long rumination upon the first four chapters of THE HOBBIT: rangedtouch.com/2026/01/02/t...
January 2, 2026 at 2:27 PM
With a knock on your door, a kindly wizard invites you to join us on Shelved By Genre's LORD OF THE YEAR, in which we will consider the popular but contested works of JRR Tolkien, kicking things off with a long rumination upon the first four chapters of THE HOBBIT: rangedtouch.com/2026/01/02/t...
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finally the onion features me!
Man Spends Whole Day Dreading Fun Activity He Signed Up For https://theonion.com/man-spends-whole-day-dreading-fun-activity-he-signed-up-1819579571/
January 2, 2026 at 4:12 PM
finally the onion features me!
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misty eyed about Johnny Chess on nye
January 1, 2026 at 1:08 AM
misty eyed about Johnny Chess on nye
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Terrible, always a total magnet. His story about getting cast in Goodfellas, basically his first movie, is so charming www.avclub.com/isiah-whitlo...
![Well, fast forward to Goodfellas. That was sort of like a feeding frenzy in New York City, and I got an audition for it. I went in and I auditioned for the guy who gets who owns the nightclub—he gets hit over the head with a bottle by Joe Pesci. And I thought, “Well, look, they’re not going to cast me as this guy.” I mean, it didn’t make sense, you know? But I got a callback! So I went back and I go into the room, and Martin Scorsese says, “What do I know you from? I know you from somewhere.” I said, “Well, I did those readings at Paul Newman’s for you, for The Color Of Money. He said, “Oh, that’s right, that’s right! Look, that part you auditioned for—obviously, you can’t do that part of. It just wouldn’t work. But I have this character!” He’s a doctor and it’s in the part of the movie where he’s like the only person that that Henry Hill trusts while he’s all coked out and everything like that. He said, “Do you think you could do that for me? I know it’s not much, but if you could do it for me, I would really appreciate it.” And I’m sitting there thinking, “Okay, act like you’ve been there before.” [Laughs.] I said, “Yeah, sure, Marty. I mean, you know, it’s not about the size of the part. It’s what we do!” So he says thanks, and that’s how I got cast! [Laughs.] I didn’t say, “Well, gee, Marty, I have never done a movie before hardly.” But I got cast in Goodfellas—that’s how all of that happened.
I do remember I went to my day job—I was a waiter at a place on 10th Avenue—and I said, “I just got a part in Goodfellas!” And they said, “No way! Get out!” I said, “No, I met with Martin Scorsese, and they’re going to cast me as this doctor.” And one of the guys said, “Oh, I’m going down there tomorrow, and I’m taking my stuff, because if you got a part, I know I’m going to get a part.” [Laughs.] He was like, “They must just be handing out parts—they must need tons of people if they cast you—you just got here!” So he went down there and he didn’t get a part. And here I a…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:bck7uabvjt4xu5uzn3exzhqj/bafkreihprpksbsipsbrgqrbrjh2t7moeap457yglhouhssilvkmowqc654@jpeg)
December 30, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Terrible, always a total magnet. His story about getting cast in Goodfellas, basically his first movie, is so charming www.avclub.com/isiah-whitlo...
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On the Patreon: Shelved by Genre's Q&A to close out the Alan Moore unit! We talk the world, stories, imagination, and, as always, think about how various characters might react to meeting Tomie. www.patreon.com/posts/146719...
December 26, 2025 at 3:33 PM
On the Patreon: Shelved by Genre's Q&A to close out the Alan Moore unit! We talk the world, stories, imagination, and, as always, think about how various characters might react to meeting Tomie. www.patreon.com/posts/146719...
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another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls
December 27, 2025 at 5:27 PM
another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls
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Jo Ann Allen Boyce Dies at 84; She was one of the Clinton 12, a group of Black students who faced white mobs when desegregating a Tennessee high school in 1956 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/u...
Jo Ann Allen Boyce Dies at 84; Braved Mobs in Integrating a School
www.nytimes.com
December 26, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Jo Ann Allen Boyce Dies at 84; She was one of the Clinton 12, a group of Black students who faced white mobs when desegregating a Tennessee high school in 1956 www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/u...
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I'm glad to see people sharing their love for Peter Greene's work. I would like to say this is one of the ten best performances of the '90s and it has haunted me since the first time I saw it. #RIP
December 14, 2025 at 12:57 AM
I'm glad to see people sharing their love for Peter Greene's work. I would like to say this is one of the ten best performances of the '90s and it has haunted me since the first time I saw it. #RIP
Heated Rivalry is just doing a Challengers riff, but the leads are good and Challengers rules, so
December 13, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Heated Rivalry is just doing a Challengers riff, but the leads are good and Challengers rules, so
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extremely sharp thoughts on horses and the discourse around it, from harper
I played Horses this weekend and I wrote down some messy thoughts not only on the game but especially on the specter of formalism that emerged to haunt us all for a moment.
transgamerthoughts.com/post/8023277...
transgamerthoughts.com/post/8023277...
I Hope You Get To Live Your Entire Life As A Human
I thought this was going to be a review of my time with Santa Ragione's Horses, the controversial art game recently banned from Steam and the Epic Store. To some extent, this will be that but after...
transgamerthoughts.com
December 8, 2025 at 6:01 PM
extremely sharp thoughts on horses and the discourse around it, from harper
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If you're trying to ditch NYT Games, which you should be since their games singlehandedly prop up the entire dogshit rag financially, you should switch to Puzzmo. An annual sub is 50% off today for a crazy $19 and as a bonus doesn't enable the genocides of Palestinians and trans people
Puzzmo — The (new) place for thoughtful puzzles.
Re-imagined mainstays like the daily Crossword Puzzle, modern classics like Really Bad Chess and SpellTower, and even a few brand new puzzles.
www.puzzmo.com
December 2, 2025 at 8:46 PM
If you're trying to ditch NYT Games, which you should be since their games singlehandedly prop up the entire dogshit rag financially, you should switch to Puzzmo. An annual sub is 50% off today for a crazy $19 and as a bonus doesn't enable the genocides of Palestinians and trans people
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When I was young, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was my master class in playwriting - wordplay, wit, structure. I saw Arcadia three times in a row, just trying to figure out HOW he did that. He was utterly singular, RIP Tom Stoppard, there will never be another www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...
Tom Stoppard, playwright of electric verve, dies at 88
His intellectually challenging and verbally dazzling works, including “Arcadia” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” were among the most acclaimed and oft-performed plays of the last half-cen...
www.washingtonpost.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:50 PM
When I was young, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was my master class in playwriting - wordplay, wit, structure. I saw Arcadia three times in a row, just trying to figure out HOW he did that. He was utterly singular, RIP Tom Stoppard, there will never be another www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...
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A story Stoppard told several times, in several places:
November 29, 2025 at 6:10 PM
A story Stoppard told several times, in several places:
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If you read this one sentence summary and think “oh interesting,”watch this movie immediately. It floored me. (And then come listen to us talk about it.)
This week's SBG bonus episode is on PENDA'S FEN, a striking BBC teleplay from 1974 wherein an incredibly uptight young man through a series of increasingly anomalous encounters learns to interrogate British identity, personal history, sexuality, religion, and more: www.patreon.com/posts/shelve...
November 28, 2025 at 4:15 PM
If you read this one sentence summary and think “oh interesting,”watch this movie immediately. It floored me. (And then come listen to us talk about it.)
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This week's SBG bonus episode is on PENDA'S FEN, a striking BBC teleplay from 1974 wherein an incredibly uptight young man through a series of increasingly anomalous encounters learns to interrogate British identity, personal history, sexuality, religion, and more: www.patreon.com/posts/shelve...
November 28, 2025 at 4:07 PM
This week's SBG bonus episode is on PENDA'S FEN, a striking BBC teleplay from 1974 wherein an incredibly uptight young man through a series of increasingly anomalous encounters learns to interrogate British identity, personal history, sexuality, religion, and more: www.patreon.com/posts/shelve...
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I know we know this, but authors need to get better at talking about how they actually make their money. Stop pretending it's from the books.
November 25, 2025 at 2:52 AM
I know we know this, but authors need to get better at talking about how they actually make their money. Stop pretending it's from the books.
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Oh hey look, it's my first piece for the AV Club!
The HD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest might modernize these ancient RPGs, but could anything recreate the experience of playing them on the NES? www.avclub.com/dragon-quest...
A quest for relevance: Dragon Quest’s remakes search for the impact it had in the ‘80s
The HD-2D remakes of Dragon Quest might modernize these ancient RPGs, but could anything recreate the experience of playing Dragon Warrior on the NES?
www.avclub.com
November 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Oh hey look, it's my first piece for the AV Club!
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